Just Press Play
by Primus210
Summary: Two friends sit down and play a Naruto RPG. They tend to screw things up more often than not.


_(A/N: I do not own the Naruto series. Obviously.)_

_**Just Press Play**_

_Chapter 1: Power On_

A simple video game console sits in a simple room found inside of a simple house in a simple town. The console is in remarkable condition for something so aged and used, while the house around it seems to be in a complete shambles. Truly, this is a testament to the two young men residing in the house.

The first resident is named Isaac. He is the very definition of the word "average". He is a brown haired, brown eyed twenty-one year old, with a desk job inside of a building on the eleventh floor. He works from nine to five, Monday through Friday. If his boss has a bad day, he has a bad day, et cetera, et cetera.

The second resident is named Jonathan, but he more often goes by the nickname "JJ". He is bald, has green eyes, and is overweight due to his diet consisting solely of pizza, barbeque chips, and caffeinated soda. He hasn't held a steady job in almost two years, and he was most recently fired from his job of pizza delivery for failing to deliver a pizza on time, for the eighth time. Upon further investigation by his boss, he was discovered inside of his car, on the side of the road, asleep, and covered in pizza grease. Needless to say, he shall not be delivering pizza ever again.

Recently, the two have gone through some monetary trouble due to the house and the car needing maintenance, and they have had to become quite frugal in their consumption of electricity, water, food, and gas.

This, of course, meant that they were bored, disgusting, hungry shut-ins.

Thankfully, today was a very special day for the two. Today was pay day. After Isaac had received his paycheck, JJ assisted him in paying the bills; paying the electric bill, the water bill, the phone bills, and the internet and cable bills. Needless to say, JJ passed out around the payment of the water bill. Isaac sighed, and continued to battle through the paperwork.

JJ woke up on the floor in a daze, staring at the slowly rotating ceiling fan directly above his head like a child stares at its mobile.

"You're seriously lucky that I'm your roommate, you know."

JJ sat up, looked over at Isaac, and smiled sheepishly at him, stretching and clearing his eyes.

"How long did I last this time?" he said in the middle of a yawn.

Isaac sighed, shook his head, and smiled at his friend. "43 minutes."

JJ frowned, and arched his left eyebrow. "Do you seriously time how long it takes for me to fall asleep? That's…really weird, dude."

Isaac shrugged. "Well, paying the bills is pretty boring."

JJ smiled sadly. "Sorry for not keeping you company, man. I've just been tired ever since that interview, and…"

"Hey, don't worry about it. Interviews can be really stressful and draining. At least you're trying to get a job."

"Look," JJ said, "I'll make it up to you, ok? Somehow…"

Isaac snorted derisively. "Hey, mate, I have a girlfriend…"

JJ frowned. "Don't be a dick, I'm serious. I feel like I owe you something after all this time."

Isaac stood up to do the leftover dishes that were a result of a month of careful water consumption. "I told you to not worry about it, JJ. Just don't stink up the house too much and do your share around here, and we're fine."

JJ groaned and laid back down on the floor, trying to follow one of the fan's blades around with his eyes. He succeeded only in making himself dizzy. "I still wish I could do something for you."

Isaac shut the water off and wiped off his hands. "If you want to do something for me, you could play some Call o' Duty with me tonight. I'll try not to destroy you this time," he said, flicking some water in JJ's general direction.

JJ chuckled, and then stopped, deep in thought. He had finally come up with an idea to pay his friend back for his hospitality. '_Video games…that's it!_'

"I'll be right back!" said JJ, as he grabbed the car keys and ran out the door.

Isaac, confused, said, "Wait, where are you-", but he was too late, as the door slammed loudly, cutting him off. The sound of their car peeling out of the driveway soon followed.

He stared blankly at the door, shrugged, and wearily went to take a shower to attempt to relieve the stresses of a long, hard day of work.

* * *

_Forty-five minutes later…_

* * *

A game with an orange spiral in the vague shape of a leaf on the cover was plopped down on the kitchen table, clacking noisily. JJ took a seat at the table, across from Isaac.

"Boom."

Isaac looked at the box on the table in the same way any sane human being would regard a rather large dog turd being dropped on their kitchen table. "…JJ, what the hell is this?"

JJ smiled a perky smile that Isaac hadn't seen in months from him. "Dude, it's the new Naruto game!"

Isaac stared blankly at JJ. "Naruto. You bought a Naruto game."

JJ's smile quickly vanished at Isaac's disdain. "What? You like Naruto…right?" he asked with a slight hint of hope.

Isaac stared at JJ, then at the game, then back at JJ. "I've never read or watched it. I've heard it's pretty dumb, though," he said dismissively, taking a sip of his favorite beer, which he saved for special occasions, such as paying the bills.

JJ shrugged. "It can be dumb at times…but I checked out reviews of this online a while ago, and it's apparently really good!"

Isaac turned his nose up at the box, almost as if he had smelled something akin to garbage, or sulfur. "I still don't know. Aren't these games all fighting games? You know I hate fighting games."

JJ chuckled. To this day, Isaac still couldn't get over how badly he lost at Street Fighter IV at that one college tournament that his roommate hosted. A win-loss record of 0-23 would do that to any self-respecting gamer. "This one's different. This…is an RPG," JJ said, holding up the game like it was the Holy Grail.

Isaac raised his eyebrows in mock surprise. "Oh good, another Final Fantasy clone, I assume?" He wasn't too fond of the Final Fantasy series either. In his opinion, they should have stopped at Final Fantasy IX.

JJ scoffed at his friend's close-mindedness. "Actually, most of the reviews compared it to the newer Personas…minus the actual personas, of course."

Now, Isaac was intrigued. "Persona, huh?" he said, cradling his chin in his hand, thinking. He had enjoyed Persona 3, and he had recently finished Persona 4…

"I don't know, I should probably turn in early," Isaac hastily said. "I may have to come in for work tomorrow."

JJ gave Isaac a look of skepticism. "Your boss may be a dick, but in all of the years you've worked at that company, he's _never_ made you come in on Saturdays. You need to get better at making up excuses. Besides," he continued, "we've already paid the bills. We're well stocked up on food now, we don't need to worry about the power shutting off on us anymore, we have quite a bit of cash left over, and it's Friday night. We both have nothing better to do."

Isaac scoffed at this. "Maybe _you_ have nothing better to do. I could go hit the clubs."

JJ snickered. "Please. You know that girlfriend of yours would never let you go out on a Friday night without her." He paused, and then added, "She's clingy like that."

Isaac opened his mouth indignantly, in order to defend his girlfriend, but he sighed instead, knowing JJ's statement to be quite factual. His shoulders drooped. "She isn't that bad…"

JJ gave Isaac a knowing smile, and then held up the box, waving it around in the air enticingly, like a dog's owner waves a treat in the air to get the dog to do a trick. He looked hopefully at Isaac. "…Well?"

Isaac looked at the box, then back to JJ. He sighed. He lost this one. "Fine, start it up," he said, shaking his head like a parent who hadn't gotten sleep in weeks.

JJ immediately jumped up and ran into the living room with the game in tow. Isaac followed reluctantly.

* * *

_Five minutes later…_

* * *

The room was dark. It was very dark, actually, aside from the brightly lit television placed near the back of the room. However, even with the sparse amount of light the television provided, one could quite easily tell what a shambles the room was in. Empty soda cans, discarded wrappers, and moldy scraps of food held a powerful dominion over this realm, although the assorted ants were forming a multitudinous army in order to overthrow the malevolent fungal despot. The bacteria, however, were the ones who pulled the strings, but they were willing to let the fungi and the ants fight their battles and believe that they really mattered. For now.

Aside from being every mysophobe's shambling, gibbering horror from beyond the stars, the room was surprisingly minimalist, containing only a couch, placed in the middle of the room, a singular lamp placed in a corner of the room, the television set, and, of course, the game console. Everyone that the two young men living in the house knew repeatedly stated how unsettling the room was to be in. The unadorned eggshell-white walls and the lack of light only seemed to exacerbate the feeling for most people.

The couch was a broken-down shell of its former self. The original blue color, over time, had become twisted and warped into a very, very dark orange. Whenever Isaac questioned JJ on how he had managed to shift the couch's original color to its direct complement, a suitable answer was never provided. Due to this, Isaac refused to sit on the thing unless at least two pieces of very thick fabric (cowhide was his personal preference) separated him from contact with it. Afterwards, the two pieces of very thick fabric were to be washed and scrubbed profusely. Failing that, they were burned.

Isaac stared at the title screen. It contained an excited young man in a blindingly bright orange jumpsuit, a young man who wore dark blue and looked like he wanted to die, and a perky young lady who had so much pink on her, Isaac swore she was at least fifty percent bubble gum. All together, the trio created a prismatic assault on Isaac's eyes that rivaled the average rock group's light show, including the one that he went to in college that ended up giving him a couple of dead pixels in his left eye. He felt the vein on his head throb, signaling the start of what would be a very long, very painful migraine.

"Yeah, I'm already not liking this."

"Come on," JJ said, "at least play it before you pass judgment."

"I think I'll just let you take the reins for this one, pal." Isaac looked with trepidation at the trio on the screen, standing under the title, '_Naruto: Hero of the Wind'. _"Who are these people?"

JJ, much to Isaac's embarrassment, began describing the characters with great earnest.

"Well, this guy in the orange jumpsuit here is Naruto, the main character. He has a demon fox named the Kyuubi living inside of him!"

"Why the hell does he have a demon fox living inside of him?" Isaac asked, bewildered.

"Well," JJ started, "The demon fox was fucking up this village that the series takes place in, called Kohona, and this super powerful ninja called the Fourth Hokage, who was the leader of Kohona, sealed him inside Naruto as a baby."

Isaac continued to stare at the screen in a mix of confusion and dread. "…Why the hell would he-you know what, I don't even care anymore." He looked at the angry looking boy in navy blue. "What's up with this guy? He looks like a whiny little douche."

JJ snorted. "Hah, you pretty much hit the nail on the head. He's part of this clan that was pretty much completely exterminated by his own brother, leaving him as the sole survivor…besides his brother, of course, who he swore to kill." He paused. "His name's Sasuke. He's an arrogant dick."

Isaac just shook his head. "Ok, whatever. What about this pink nightmare right here?"

JJ sneered. "Eh, she's Sakura. She's kind of useless in the first part of the series."

Isaac looked at JJ. "That's it?" JJ shrugged. "I don't really like her that much. She gets better, but…man. She's in love with Sasuke, Naruto's in love with her, and Sasuke-"

"Hates everything. Got it." Isaac pressed the start button, and a short sound bite came out of the speakers.

"_I'm ready to go! Believe it!_"

Silence enveloped the room for a few agonizing seconds.

"JJ, what the hell was that?"

"That was Naruto. His catchphrase is 'believe it'."

"…Christ."

After a short loading screen, a character select screen appeared, allowing the guys to choose from Naruto, Sasuke or Sakura.

Isaac cycled through them hesitantly. "Are you absolutely sure this isn't a fighting game?"

"One-hundred percent," JJ said. "I think this just gives you a choice for the replay value, or something."

Isaac continued to idly cycle through the three characters. "Only three characters? Really? That doesn't seem like a lot."

JJ picked up the box and scanned it quickly. "Ah, here. It says there are over twenty characters to choose from, so we'll probably just unlock them as we go or something."

Isaac did a double-take. "What? Over twenty characters?" He looked back at the screen in shock. "God damn!"

JJ nodded sagely. "Yeah. This is a long game, too." He opened the box and pulled out the manual found inside, flipping through its pages. "The manual says you could take upwards of forty hours to finish the game with just one character, so it could take…forty times twenty..." He pulled out his phone and did some quick calculations. "…at least eight-hundred hours to finish the game completely."

Isaac stared into space in disbelief, then groaned, placing his head in his hands in exasperation. "I honestly doubt that," he said, desperately trying to grasp onto any hope he could find in staunch skepticism. He didn't really have the time or energy to play _any_ game for eight-hundred hours, let alone a Naruto RPG.

JJ looked up at the screen after flipping through the manual for a few more seconds as Isaac cradled his head in his hands like a newborn babe. "So, who're you gonna pick?" He looked over expectantly at Isaac.

Isaac looked at the choices closely. "Well, the Naruto guy looks really annoying, and his stats say he's really stupid. He has really god damn amazing strength, endurance, and chakra stores, though-"

"Chakra is the universe's form of magic, basically," JJ helpfully stated.

"…right, and…Sasuke looks like a douche, but has decent stats, and Sakura seems to have pretty good chakra control, but she kind of blows at everything else. Also, she looks annoying," Isaac said with finality.

A short silence once again swallowed the room whole before spitting it back out again.

"So…?" JJ asked?

Isaac shrugged. "I don't really care. Personally, though…" He cycled through the characters and landed on Sasuke. "I think this Sasuke guy looks pretty damn good. He may be a whiny dick, but he has pretty decent stats all around. He's actually balanced, you know?"

JJ stared at Isaac in shock, seemingly deeply offended by very notion of picking Sasuke. "Dude, no. We can't pick him."

Isaac looked over at JJ, annoyed. "Why the hell not?"

JJ shook his head. "Because he's a douche."

Isaac looked back at the screen and sighed. "God dammit. Well, we aren't picking the girl."

"Hell no."

Isaac wryly smiled. "So I guess we pick Obnoxious Orange Jumpsuit Lad. Why'd you even ask me who I was gonna pick if you were just gonna make me pick this guy?" Isaac questioned him accusingly.

JJ smiled. "He's the main character! We have to play through it as him first, right? Besides, he's the most interesting choice we have available to us by far," JJ said, motioning with his hand as if indicating a far-off land.

Isaac looked down at the floor for a second in thought, looked back up and said, "Isn't this an RPG, though? He seems like a warrior class…those guys usually blow by the endgame."

"Actually," JJ stated, "every source that I've heard about this game from says that he's the most broken character in the game, to the point where he's considered easy mode by pretty much everyone."

Isaac looked at the screen, uninterested, cycling through to Naruto. "Well, I'm not surprised. He _is_ the main character, after all."

JJ shrugged. "I guess so."

Isaac let the selector hover over Naruto for a bit, and the two men examined his stats more in depth.

"Let's see," JJ said, "strength is high, endurance is high, intelligence is low, agility is above average, chakra stores are very high, chakra control is very low, charisma is above average, and luck is above average." Isaac frowned as he looked at Naruto's confidently stupid stance.

"See, when I play RPGs, though, I like to use mage-types, because they usually get really awesome spells that can kill pretty much anything by the end of the game," Isaac explained. "Naruto just seems like a dumbass whose solution to problems is just punching the shit out of them..."

"Whatever, man," JJ said, exasperated with his friend's complaints. "Just press play."

Isaac sighed and pressed the button that started the game, sealing their fates and sending the sound of steel clashing together reverberating through the room. Another sound bite rang through the air, clear as a bell, while the 3D model shaped like a boy with an obnoxious orange jumpsuit gave the two men a thumbs-up, smiling confidently.

"_I'll do my best! Believe it!"_

* * *

_(A/N: Be sure to leave a review! I need help with this one, folks!)  
_


End file.
